Movie Review | 'Power and Terror'

Overflowing With Opinions, Lacking in Minced Words

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: November 22, 2002

ower and Terror," John Junkerman's new documentary, consists of excerpts from several lectures given by Noam Chomsky last spring, interspersed with an interview in which Mr. Chomsky, the M.I.T. linguist and longtime critic of American foreign policy, reflects on the current state of the world. Apart from the intermittent soundtrack music — which sounds a bit like Japanese versions of obscure Neil Young songs — the film, which opens today in Manhattan, would not be out of place on C-Span, which occasionally broadcasts Mr. Chomsky's public appearances. For his admirers, it might serve as a footnote to "Manufacturing Consent," Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick's 1992 film, which is more comprehensive and more ambitious (and more than twice as long). That film explores Mr. Chomsky's linguistic theories as well as his views on politics and the media, and it gives his critics a few chances to speak up.

Mr. Junkerman, an American filmmaker who works in Japan, is clearly sympathetic to his subject. The opening credits unspool a string of testimonials to Mr. Chomsky's courage and integrity, and the packed campus lecture halls greet him with standing ovations. At the conclusion of his talks, a crowd generally gathers by the stage to pepper him with questions or pester him for autographs, and he graciously obliges. A sampling of audience opinion after one of the talks gathers praise for his "encyclopedic knowledge." "I agree with everything he said," one woman declares.

Most of the audience for "Power and Terror" will probably feel the same way. Mr. Chomsky is a figure who inspires intense devotion, and equally intense revulsion; he is an intellectual hero to some and, to others, the embodiment of reflexive left-wing anti-Americanism. This polarization has only increased as his book on the causes and consequences of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 has become a best seller. At the same time, though, as Mr. Chomsky acknowledges in the film, a searching and wide-ranging debate has unfolded about America's response to terrorism and, more broadly, about the history and future of its role in the world. Mr. Junkerman's film is best understood as a necessary, if partisan, text in that continuing argument.

The film does not delve into some of Mr. Chomsky's more controversial post-9/11 statements, like his equating of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with the 1998 American bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceuticals factory, or his characterization of the United States war against the Taliban as genocidal. It presents, instead, a more general outline of his critique of American power, which has been consistent since the early days of the Vietnam war.

His criticism seems to be motivated less by an ideological quarrel with the United States — a country whose ideals and virtues he admires and whose principles of free inquiry and expression have enabled him to speak and publish without fear of suppression — than by a contempt, rooted in the anarchist political tradition, for the operations of power. Although he opposes all kinds of violence, he is especially concerned with the violence of empires, whose hegemony enables them to escape moral reckoning and political accountability.

Even though Mr. Chomsky's arguments are presented with meticulous empirical detail (as well as with modesty, patience and occasional bursts of wit), there is an abstract, theoretical air about them. His moral clarity has its appeal, but it often seems to evade the complexities of the world as it is. It would be much easier if the world were neatly divided into imperial states and helpless, subject peoples (or, for that matter, into forces of freedom and axes of evil), but the categories have a way of getting tangled up — in the Balkans, in Asia and certainly in the Middle East — something that Mr. Chomsky, for all his intelligence and discipline, does not always grasp.

POWER AND TERROR

Noam Chomsky in Our Times

Directed by John Junkerman; director of photography, Koshiro Otsu; edited by Mr. Junkerman and Takeshi Hata; music by Kiyoshiro Imawano; produced by Tetsujiro Yamagami; released by First Run Features. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, South Village. Running time: 74 minutes. This film is not rated.